9 - Microbiological hazards and safe design

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter presents an introduction to designing of chilled food products and the systems that support their supply chain, with an emphasis on microbiology. The design should take the original marketing concept and balance safety, quality and cost risks to come up with a product and process design that is safe, meets customer and consumer expectations and can be manufactured at competitive cost. In practice, product and process design will always be a compromise between the demands for safety and quality on the one hand, and cost and operational limitations on the other. The skill of the product designer is to balance the competing demands of microbiology and quality to find an acceptable balance. To date, the chilled food industry has been successful in achieving this balance. Heat is the main means of giving products their character, ensuring product safety and eliminating spoilage bacteria. The extent of heating will very often be limited by the need to retain product character, especially colour and texture. Usually, cooking processes will incidentally exceed the minimum heat treatments needed for microbiological purposes, either in-factory or in-home, but minimum processes should always be designed to eliminate specific bacteria. The techniques of risk assessment and hazard analysis, either formal or more commonly informal, may be used to guide product designers in achieving safe product designs with an acceptable balance between the sale of products containing raw or non-decontaminated components, the need for heat treatment or decontamination either in the factory or by consumers and the chances and hazards of pathogen presence in the product at consumption.